At the same time, a number of private equity firms, including Bain Capital, Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group LP, have started assessing the possibility of a leveraged buyout of all or parts of Symantec, the sources said. Bain did not respond to requests for comment, while the rest of the private equity firms declined to comment.

“This partnership with General Atlantic signals the scaling of our ambition – we will improve the overall Squarespace experience, make it available to more people around the world, and demonstrate a commitment to products that go beyond websites and online stores,” said founder and CEO Anthony Casalena in the funding release.

The cost of components, known in electronics industry lingo as a bill of materials, has been drifting upward on Samsung phones in recent months, said Andrew Rassweiler, an analyst who heads up IHS’ teardown research efforts. “Our main takeaway is that Samsung has been moved up to the higher end of the cost spectrum. It used to be that its typical flagship phone sold for $600 without a contract and had a bill of materials of about $200,” Rassweiler said. “Now they’re inching up above $250 regularly.”

Hook a Gramofon box up to your Internet connection and not only will it stream music from Spotify, but it will act as a social jukebox where your friends can sign in via Facebook to line up songs to play. Oh, and because Fon has plenty of experience in building routers, you friends can use the Gramofon to get WiFi too, without needing your password. As long as you’re friends with them on Facebook, they can get online.

It’s pretty well accepted among the Bitcoin analysts that Karpeles made a huge blunder back in 2012 when he sold Bitcoins belonging to customer accounts at $10 per Bitcoin to pay for operating expenses planning to pay them back when the price went back down. When the Bitcoin rallied to $800 he was caught in a classic short squeeze from which there was no recovery. So he invented a story that the Bitcoins had been stolen because of the malleability bug. He will eventually be convicted of fraud and spen a large part of his young years in prison away fro his family.

Apple’s patent on slide-to-unlock is one of five over which Apple has sued Samsung, saying that the Korean electronics giant owes it more than $2 billion for using its patented technology in various phones and tablets. Samsung denies its products infringe and also says the patents at issue are invalid. Meanwhile, it has countersued Apple for infringing on two of its patents.

For Koyfman, who is joining the board, Storefront is on the forefront of a new trend emerging in retail where spaces are available in a more flexible way. And it’s providing a new way to connect digital brands with consumers in the offline world — something that could be interesting for brands like Warby Parker, which is also a Spark Capital investment.

The French computer hardware company LaCie, perhaps best known for their external hard drives, announced this week it fell victim to a data breach that may have put at risk the sensitive information of anyone who has purchased a product off their website during the last year.

In the world of mobile design, Sketch is a household name on the Mac. Apple gave it a design award in 2012, and it has been featured numerous times in the Mac App Store The highly anticipated 3.0 update to Sketch was released yesterday by Bohemian Coding as a separate purchase, and it’s currently the top paid app in the Mac App Store.

Why you should care: Project Ara phones are expected to have a life of five to six years – far longer than your current smartphone. Instead of updating your phone every two years, you save up for the latest modules. The goal is that when a new processor or high-megapixel camera is introduced, it’ll be available as a module for Ara owners to purchase. Plus, like the prototype at today’s event, when you break the screen, you can quickly replace it with a module.

TechCrunch has learned that Amazon’s upcoming flagship smartphone, running a forked version of Android, will have head-tracking capabilities offering up limited 3D effects. This key feature will be reserved to just a few built-in gestures, according to a source with first-hand experience of the company’s mobile ambitions.

Starting today, Google is updating the ‘Insert Photo’ button located on the bottom toolbar of new Gmail messages to include photos that have been backed up from mobile devices. Hit the icon and you’ll be shown the same grid interface found on Google+, with tabs for recent photos and all of your curated photo albums. The option to upload a new photo from your PC or laptop, as well as from a URL, is still available in separate tabs.

The 14 "reasonable and established categories" include national defense, job and family security, health care, and response to national disasters. Site users can allocate specific percentages to each, and must provide basic information on location and demographics, but the site says all data will remain anonymous. The project is clearly billed as a simulation, but one that Ebert hopes will generate discussion and "serve to reflect our ethics as a nation, as well as to illuminate disparities between our will and the actual expenditures of the current political powers." According to a press release, The New IRS is the first in a series of similar web-based experiments, which the site suggests has the umbrella name Second Gov , described in its as-of-yet inactive Twitter account as "Second Life meets Change.org."

The pieces are made using recycled construction materials and industrial waste to form a concrete aggregate, Gizmodo reports . The 3-D printer used to build the houses is 500 feet long, 33 feet wide and 20 feet high. Each home costs around $4,800 to build.

The combination of Zebra and the Motorola Solutions unit
would have had pro-forma sales in 2013 of about $3.5 billion,
according to a statement today. About 4,500 Motorola employees
will join Zebra. Both companies are based in the Chicago suburbs
-- Motorola in Schaumburg, Zebra in Lincolnshire.

If you’ve played any of the new Telltale Games series The Wolf Among Us , you’ll know who that hairy dude with the bandages is. It’s Bigby Wolf (née Big Bad), the star of the fantastic adventure game series based on the Eisner award-winning comic book series, Fables , by Bill Willingham.

Microsoft today announced major updates to the Windows Dev Center and Windows Phone Dev Center , with the former rolling out “later this week” and the latter arriving “later today.” While Microsoft says many of the enhancements address feedback from developers, the big additions are support for universal Windows apps and Windows Phone 8.1 apps.

Over the past four years, Twitter has struggled to create a cohesive consumer product strategy, according to people familiar with the matter, and has had issues in making significant changes to the company’s core mobile and Web products. This was in part due to management issues, as well as indecision and a lack of clear direction for Twitter’s consumer products.

To test these bulbs out, we used a device called a spectrometer. The spectrometer is useful for comparing things like bulb brightness and color rendering in generic bulbs, but it's helpful for testing color-changing LEDs, too. After setting the bulbs to a certain color, we can use the spectrometer to measure just how accurate those colors are.

Pioneer announced five existing in-dashboard consoles will be receiving a firmware upgrade that adds Apple CarPlay functionality. All five units are part of the NEX line and are currently available from Amazon.

“The wireless industry today has taken an incremental yet inadequate step to address the epidemic of smartphone theft,” Leno said in a statement. “Only weeks ago, they claimed that the approach they are taking today was infeasible and counterproductive. While I am encouraged they are moving off of that position so quickly, today’s ‘opt-in’ proposal misses the mark if the ultimate goal is to combat street crime and violent thefts involving smartphones and tablets.”

Following the closing bell today, Intel reported its first quarter results, including revenue of $12.764 billion, and earnings per share of $0.38. The results roughly match analyst expectations that the company would earn $0.37 per share on top line of $12.81 billion.

Through DARPA’s new “ Mobile Hotspots Program ,” the agency has planned to retrofit a fleet of aging RQ-7 shadow drones that were once deployed for various surveillance missions by the US military in Iraq. The repurposed drones will now be used to help the military carry out operations in remote locations that lack Internet connectivity.

For the first time in more than a year, Yahoo is growing . Yahoo on Tuesday reported its revenue, minus commissions paid to partners for Web traffic, rose 1% in the first quarter after four straight quarters without growth. Revenue from display ads was flat at $453 million. Yahoo held a conference call with analysts beginning around 5 p.m. ET.

Twitter is buying Gnip, the data startup that has full access to the Twitter firehose. Twitter now has what it needs to deliver meaningful data to companies that want to examine specific discussions and activities, rather than just the content Twitter chooses to publicize.

Overall, the plan has something for most wireless carriers to both love and hate. While it allows all wireless carriers to bid for airwaves in an effort to drive up revenue from the sale, the plan also potentially sets aside licenses for smaller carriers. And it creates a new standard for how many licenses a wireless company can hold, which could make it easier for Verizon Wireless and AT&T to acquire more airwaves in the future, but hurt Sprint’s ability to do the same.

"We are truly honoured that our journalism has been recognised with the Pulitzer prize," said Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian. "This was a complex story, written, edited and produced by a team of wonderful journalists. We are particularly grateful for our colleagues across the world who supported the Guardian in circumstances which threatened to stifle our reporting. And we share this honour, not only with our colleagues at the Washington Post, but also with Edward Snowden, who risked so much in the cause of the public service which has today been acknowledged by the award of this prestigious prize."

There aren’t a whole lot of shortcuts here, but with the right data, we can at least gain a head start on the prediction process. Saying beyond a shadow of a doubt that X is the best number of times to post to Twitter and Y is the best number to post to Facebook would be misleading. There is well-researched data, for sure. But consider it as a jumping off point for customizing your own optimal schedule.

We'll have much more from Stallone and the cast over the next few weeks on what the star has promised will be the biggest and best Expendables movie yet, but for now check out the brand-new behind-the-scenes pic above, and look out for the full set visit hitting IGN tomorrow at 9am PST, 5pm GMT.

Gramofon is an attempt to change that, and also put a spotlight on other services that could be enabled through shared Wi-Fi. Much like the music router uses Wi-Fi for presence and Facebook for authentication to let you and your friends play music together, Fon could enable other services to offer shared experiences, be it in a connected home or a more communal space, said Puregger: “We see Wi-Fi as the connector.”

SpaceX has signed a 20-year lease with NASA to operate a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On Monday, the space agency announced that it had reached an agreement that would see SpaceX take over maintenance and operation of Launch Complex 39A, a site that saw the first and last Space Shuttle launch and 11 Apollo missions, including the Apollo 11 flight that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon. NASA, which has increasingly outsourced routine missions to the private sector, will no longer foot the bill for upkeep. "SpaceX will maximize the use of pad 39A both to the benefit of the commercial launch industry as well as the American taxpayer," SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell says.

Apple hasn't had much luck in the gaming console department, but it has seen amazing success with gaming on its iOS devices. This great idea docks your iDevice, hooks it up to a big screen and adds some controllers and a hefty chunk of hard drive for saving your gaming progress.

The team knew the cable would have to be exceptionally strong-- "at least a hundred times stronger than the strongest steel that we have," by ­[Google X researcher Dan Piponi]'s calculations. He found one material that could do this: carbon nanotubes. But no one has manufactured a perfectly formed carbon nanotube strand longer than a meter. And so elevators "were put in a deep freeze," as [Google X researcher Mitch Heinrich] says, and the team decided to keep tabs on any advances in the carbon nanotube field.

Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane, another password manager, says his company experienced a "10x" surge in new users at its peak over the last week. Traffic to Dashlane didn't peak until a couple days after Heartbleed was discovered. As with the other password security companies we spoke with, traffic remains much higher than normal a week later.

Apple confirmed to The Verge that Pioneer will be selling aftermarket receivers. It's an altogether different approach than what Apple has taken in some time — long choosing to retain tight control over both hardware and software — but with the difficulty of taking over a major vehicle component and the coming competition from big names like Google and Microsoft , it may be interested in getting its system out there as soon as it can. That said, CarPlay is only active so long as an iPhone is attached, so it may only be a matter of making sure that the system is available to drivers who want it.

The idea came from a dad watching his son struggle to play retro Nintendo games on the iPhone. Instead of a fancy plastic shell that pairs over Bluetooth, the dad decided to make a simple sleeve out of silicone that replicates Game Boy Advance controls.

In a statement, the Google spokesperson told us: "Titan Aerospace and Google share a profound optimism about the potential for technology to improve the world. It's still early days, but atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation. It's why we're so excited to welcome Titan Aerospace to the Google family."

is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 34 million unique visitors worldwide and 15 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

Buying the Gramofon makes you a member of the Fon network. Fon is an international Wi-Fi company that partners with local telecoms companies to get you online when you're out and about. Fon Wi-Fi hotspots are available for free to customers of BT in the UK, for example, T-Mobile in Germany, MTC in Russia, Oi in Brazil and Softbank in Japan. Fon doesn't have any partners in the US or Australia, but you can buy a router yourself.

Automattic, the San Francisco-based company that is responsible for the WordPress web-publishing and blog-hosting platform — and the associated open-source community — is raising a round of venture capital that could value the company at $1 billion or more, according to a report in Fortune magazine. The financing is said to be in the $100-million to $150-million range. WordPress recently acquired Longreads, a content-sharing community, and has said it wants to get more into content recommendation. Web-publishing competitor Squarespace just closed a financing round of its own that was worth $40 million.

A game doesn't need to be perfect in order for you to keep playing it, so long as there's some kind of tradeoff that provides something good in exchange for the bad. Maybe the voice acting is iffy, but you can deal because the combat is fast-paced and exhilarating. Perhaps the level design is pedestrian, but the story is enchanting enough for you to overlook it. In the case of unusual 3DS and Vita turn-based RPG Conception 2: Children of the Seven Stars , that exchange never quite happens. Although it contains some genuinely interesting ideas and even some charming weirdness, overall Conception 2 is disappointing and disjointed.
The situation is a familiar one: A select few are given the power to fight an invading evil. In this case, the Star God blesses certain teenagers with his energy so that they might slay the monsters spewing out of dark portals across the land. It's pretty standard gather-your-party-and-sally-forth-into-the-dungeon stuff, reminiscent of series like Pokemon and Shin Megami Tensei, except some of your party is made up of Star Children, which you create by "Classmating" with the other students at the school where you've been sent to hone your combat abilities.

That Twitter has yet to agree to opening an office in Turkey is a sticking point that might not go away. Turkey argues that Twitter generates tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue in the country, but doesn't pay any taxes on it. The Turkish government wants Twitter to open an office in the country to enable the collection of those taxes.

Google has updated its terms of service to reflect its email scanning practices that are carried out to provide users with customized search results and tailored advertising, as Reuters first spotted .

Some Internet companies that were vulnerable to the bug have already updated their servers with a security patch to fix the issue. This means you'll need to go in and change your passwords immediately for these sites. Even that is no guarantee that your information wasn't already compromised , but there's also no indication that hackers knew about the exploit before this week. The companies that are advising customers to change their passwords are doing so as a precautionary measure.